Tinseltown Delhi

I am back in Delhi since yesterday evening staying with Chris, Elodie's friend from Austria. He is staying in a trendy area with a little market place in south delhi. Everyday brings something new in the way of adventures and experiences. Last night after washing my teeth in the company of a cockroach (as you can amagine I was dancing around the place hysterically and shuddering the whole time hopping from one foot to the next with Chris's housmate from Nepal laughing at me. This morning I woke up and had breakfast with a little mouse the size of a lighter, hiding under the toaster! Goodmoring Delhi!

So today we set out with the following tasks;

• British Airways (for elodie to change her return flight)
• Railway station (to book our next journey)
• Lunch
• Market
• Internet Cafe
• Home

We managed to get to BA and Railway station! And after giving up on the rest we grabed something on the go to eat and headed home on a rickshaw to the itnernet cafe around the corner from Chris where I am now. It would appear that the Indians are even more inefficient than the Belgians!! We queued for 30mins to be told to go to another part of the station, and after queueing there they told us to go back to the place we where before, and it wasn't until Elodie started shouting "non, mais vous vous foutez de ma gueule, la!!" that we eventually found the right place. We where extactic to see some Tourist faces there at last. It was somewhat reasuring I have to admit.

And as it happens, downloading photos is proving to be quite an epic journey in itself. The computers are either too slow or do not support new external drives. apparently you can put your pics on to a cdrom for 25 rps (70 cents) but i have yet to find a place that will do that for me. There is always some stupid excuse for it not to work. I am quickly running out of memory (and patience) I have taken so many pictures already! at least 400.

So we stay in Delhi tonight again with my two new room mates cockroach and mouse and catch the night-train tomorrow at 9pm to Jhunjhunu south west of Delhi in Rajasthan. From there the plan as it stands (because it will no doubt change):

• Jhunjhunu 3 nights
• Jaisalmer 3/4 nights\
• Udaipur 3 nights
• Mumbai 2 nights(by the 1/dec)
• Kerala/Cochin 1 week
• Goa 1 week
• Delhi (20/dec)
  

So far, as I mentioned the high of the trip was the Taj. The low was just this afternoon when a little street urchin about 4 years old patted her cold, dirty little hand on my leg when we stopped at the traffic lights to sell some magazines. I can still feel that hand now. Its just everywhere but the disturbing thing is that you just go into a trance and ignore it. I am finding quite hard to cope with that I have to say, but i have to remind myself that its just a way of life. Apparently the poeple we saw sleeping on the side of the road are Bangladeshis and they are everywhere. They set up camp in the most bizarre of places and you see them going about their daily business of cooking and sorting and selling whatever they can get their hands on.

One thing that stands out so far in my 1 week in India is the whoe Rikshaw business. It was on a journey home on one today that I suddenly realised that infact they are just sideless Robin Three Wheelers masquerading as funky green and yellow carriers. And once you get passed their whole deathwish game of splat the pedestrian, and arm yourself with mouth protection and earplugs, they can be quite enjoyable.

Another thing to mention here also is the power of "The Horn". All hail the god of Beep. He is the Master of the road and must be obeyed! And ofcourse they come in all different sounds, intonnations, lengths and so on. The most annoying one I have heard so far is the boyracer electronic beep that sounds like a video game. Its just so obnoxious. But what is really intriguing is the amount of huge oldskool trucks around the place all painted in lively colours and decorated with plastic vishnus, and ganeshes and multi coloured tinsel. On the back they have painted in beautiful writing "please horn" or "beep please" or "use dipper at night". Very odd. Tinsel is the demi god here. Shops, cars, buses, rickshaws are all adorned with it. Really quite funny.

Finally, the fashion here is stuck somewhere between the late 70's and early 90's more for the boys. They sport the multicloloured paisly, or striped shirts with the Saturday Night Fever colars and stone washed jeans. And that fashion carries right throught to the music. The tv ads are just comical. We watched an entire bollywood movie the other night with constant ads running on top and on the bottom of the tv screens where the black wide screen bits should be. Hysterical!
Anyway I had better go cos something is beeping on my screen. I swear I will really do my best to get photos on to my blog.

One more thing, I thought when I came here I would have a free-er bowel but as it turns out I think I am one of the rare few who travel to india and get constipated...food for thought...

Namaste Sahibs and Memsahibs